


Twice Is Coincidence

by ryanthepowerbottomguy



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship, Space AU, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-25 00:11:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3789421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryanthepowerbottomguy/pseuds/ryanthepowerbottomguy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lindsay ducks into an alleyway, heart pounding, blood running down her arm to drip off her fingertips.</p>
<p>This is <i>not</i> how the job should have gone down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twice Is Coincidence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alligatorjigglinfever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alligatorjigglinfever/gifts).



Lindsay ducks into an alleyway, heart pounding, blood running down her arm to drip off her fingertips.

This is _not_ how the job should have gone down.

She melts further into the shadows, thankful for her dark clothing as the Union cops pass by her hiding spot without so much as a second glance. They’re shouting and loud and _gods below_ , so completely conspicuous. She’s a little ashamed she almost got caught, but she is a hundred percent sure that someone tipped them off.

Once she’s sure they’re gone, she pulls her hood further down over her face and steps back into the mass of people moving through the marketplace. It’s midday on Phobos (of the given value of _day_ on a moon that has an orbital period of less than eight hours), and people are moving fast to get food or to head back to work. It’s warm, above zero, and people have taken advantage of the nice weather. Lindsay is thankful for that. She wipes the blood on her hand onto her pants and keeps moving, head down but looking for anything that could help her get out of the area fast.

If shit hits the fan, keep your head down, get out of the area, and contact HQ. Don’t get caught—and if you do, don’t get detained. There are rules that had been drilled into her head all through training.

Deep breaths, Lindsay, she tells herself. No one is going to spot you. They don’t even know exactly who they’re looking for.

Up ahead of her—near the exit to the market into the next district—there’s a sudden commotion, and her head shoots up. Dark-uniformed cops are pouring into the place, and her heartbeat picks up. They’re trying to cordon off this exit, seal her in. That just won’t do.

She turns around, hoping that they’re concentrating their manpower at this gate, and calming starts heading back the way she came. She pushes past people who are growing more and more confused at the shouts and whistles of the Union cops. In the blossoming commotion, no one notices her.

As soon as she can, she breaks into a sprint and turns onto an emptier street, one that leads to a road out of town. It’s not so clogged with civilians here; there’s only one other person on this block, a man who’s leaning against a bike and drinking from a flask. He’s tall and broad but he looks soft.

“Yo, I’m taking your bike,” she says when she’s close, and he looks down at her with wide eyes. She grins, and she knows there’s still blood on her teeth from the way he flinches.

“Nah,” he says then, shaking his head. There’s a spark of amusement in his eyes. “My boss will _kill_ me if I lose this.”

“This isn’t a negotiation,” she says, already reaching for the knife at her belt. It’s a shame. He’s pretty.

The man holds up his hands at the sight of the weapon and then looks toward the mouth of the street, where the sounds of the manhunt are becoming louder. “Can you even drive one of these?”

She snarls at him. “I’ll figure it out.”

He shakes his head, and as he caps his flask and tucks it into the inner pocket of his jacket he says, “ _Or_ , you tell me where you’re headed, and I’ll take you myself.”

There’s an unassuming safehouse half a klick from town, where she’ll be able to message HQ to get a shuttle.

“Fine,” she says, and he smiles.

—

The man introduces himself as James and doesn’t prod for her name when she doesn’t provide it.

“Here,” he says after she climbs on the bike behind him. He holds out a helmet to her. “I only have the one. It’s probably a little big on you.”

She pulls it on without any argument: after all, it’ll keep her face covered, and that’s what matters most right now. She isn’t sure anybody actually saw her face, but it’s better overcautious than in a Union cell.

They kick up gray dust on their way out of town, Lindsay glancing behind them every couple seconds to make sure they’re not being followed. They aren’t, and they make it out without being stopped. She breathes a heavy sigh of relief when they’re outside the walls.

Lindsay gives James the occasional direction but otherwise they drive in silence except for the bike’s engine. It isn’t long at all before they pull into the farm. It’s quiet and out of the way and staffed by a minimum of workers who have no idea what the place really is. Inside the farmhouse there will be a way to contact HQ at the station orbiting Mars, and then she’ll be out of here and hopefully won’t ever be back.

“Thanks for the ride,” Lindsay says, sliding off the bike once James cuts the engine. She wobbles a little, and she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Must have lost more blood than she thought. She hands his helmet back to him. “Really. I owe you one, and I hate owing favors. Next time I’m on this moon I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Make it a soda and you have a deal,” James says with a smile. “Good luck. Get the wound looked at.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, waving off his concern. They’re _strangers_ , and she isn’t used to people being kind for no reason.

She watches him leave, waiting until he’s barely visible on the road before heading into the farmhouse to make that call.

—

Lindsay is what they call _Adrift:_ she was born on a shuttle, and she grew up on a ship. She didn’t even touch land until she was near eleven, and though she came to tolerate Mars when she and her parents settled there, her home was always going to be the void.

It’s why she keeps moving now, why she takes so much pleasure in taking jobs on different planets: it keeps her in space, keeps her off the ground.

—

Three months later Lindsay is on Tethys, finishing up a bodyguarding assignment. It’s not her favorite kind of job, but she likes this moon well enough even if it’s cold as hell, and besides these kinds of things always pay well.

There’s two days left on this job when it all goes sideways. The man she’s guarding—some businessman that deals in some real shit if she’s understood him right—has an estate in Tethys’ largest city. It’s normally secure, and there are guards patrolling the place to make sure it stays that way.

An explosion goes off late that night, rocketing her into full awareness. The place goes into lockdown, and there are people running around everywhere trying to figure out what the hell is happening. Lindsay takes her gun and heads toward where the explosion went off.

She finds even more chaos there, and ducks around a corner to see a dark shadow disappear down the hall. She follows it, taking care to stay silent, sure from the way it’s moving that it’s the intruder.

Something grabs her from behind when she turns the corner. She twists in the grasp until she can bring her gun up to point at—

Lindsay blinks in the dim light.

“Fancy meeting you here,” James says with a bright, bright smile. “So, about that favor.”

“No way,” Lindsay says.

“Just let me finish my job,” James says. “Then I’ll be out of here like nothing happened. I’ll even knock you out if you think it’ll make your story more believable.”

“If this guy doesn’t survive the night I don’t get paid,” Lindsay snarls. She can’t _believe_ that she thought he was just a delivery guy. Man has some damn good acting skills.

“Which is unfortunate, as if he does survive the night, _I_ don’t get paid.” The smile disappears from James’ face. “Listen. Part of the reason they sent _me_ is that my bosses knew about your organization’s involvement.”

Lindsay raises her gun so that it’s pointed at James’ head. “Right. I’m definitely going to believe you.”

James shrugs. “Fine. Don’t. You know, this is the second time in as many meetings that you’ve pointed a weapon on me.”

Lindsay’s hands don’t waver. She wants to kill him. She also wants to learn how reliable his intel is about a possible leak. If he’s right, she’ll feel bad later about shooting him in the head.

Finally, she says, “I’m going to let you go. Get off the planet. Tell whoever hired you that you couldn’t breach our security. There’s your fucking favor.”

James is smiling.

Lindsay smiles back, just a little. “And if you’re right about that leak, then I guess I’ll owe you another one.”

“I guess you will,” James says.

—

Mars is just about as miserable as Lindsay remembers from her childhood. Or—no, it’s not Mars specifically, but being on the ground for any amount of time makes her antsy.

Unfortunately, she’s grounded for the foreseeable future.

When he walks into the bar, Lindsay actually can’t believe it. The system is too big for them to just keep meeting up like this.

Her suspicions are confirmed when he heads right toward her booth and slides in opposite her. He doesn’t say anything for a minute. She doesn’t offer him a drink.

“You know,” he says finally, looking a little awkward, “it’s not easy finding a merc when I don’t even know the name she goes by.”

Lindsay laughs hollowly. “Didn’t you hear the news, James? ’M not a merc anymore.” She pulls up her left sleeve to show off the thick black bands of ink winding around her wrist. He winces. They might not have worked for the same people, but everyone in the damn _galaxy_ knows what those marks mean.

“That leak went up further than I thought,” she says, tugging her sleeve back over the tattoo. “Whole organization was corrupt as shit.”

“And so they blacklisted you,” James says sympathetically. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Lindsay shrugs. “Better to find out now than when I’m about to die for them. Didn’t I owe you a drink?”

“I’m fine.” James is staring off over her shoulder. “That does explain a few things about my intel.”

She takes in the way he’s shifting, how he’s looking at anywhere but her. “I’m your job,” she says flatly.

He nods. “Seems somebody thinks you’ve gone rogue.” He pauses for a moment, like he’s figuring out how to put his next sentence. “Actually, there’s a good possibility that your organization is looking to tie up loose ends.”

Lindsay wouldn’t put it past them at this point. She finishes off her drink in a couple swallows. “So when? Where? Now?”

James looks stricken. Then he leans in close so he can murmur, “I’ll give you two days to get off the planet. We never have to see each other again. You saved my life once.”

Lindsay shakes her head. “That’s a nice offer, but I don’t have a way of getting off-planet. So let’s get this over with.”

This close up, James’ eyes are very blue, and one of them glows brighter than the other—an implant, then. He’s good looking for a hitman. “Okay,” he says. “I have a ship. We could get out of here together.”

“You’re kidding, right,” she says flatly. There is now way she is willing to owe him like that again.

Seemingly sensing her thoughts, he says, “No favors, no owing each other this time. We’re just… acquaintances, and I’m giving you a lift. I’ll take you anywhere in the system, and then we can part ways.”

“I don’t care where, as long as it gets me off the ground,” Lindsay says. She knows that there’s a very good chance that he’s just trying to get her somewhere quieter so he can kill her without witnesses. She’ll take that risk for a chance to get into space again.

“Great,” he says, and he pulls her out of the bar and into blazing Martian sunlight.

—

It turns out that James does not, in fact, have a ship.

He looks over his shoulder at her, grinning. His hands are buried in the lock mechanism of a small ship at the edge of the docks.

“I… thought you’d agree to come with me more easily if you thought I had a ship,” he says. “Besides, nobody’s going to look for us on a stolen ship.”

He has a point there, and yet.

“You know, this is all incredibly sketchy,” Lindsay says. “Any other situation and I’d think you were trying to get me somewhere quiet to have your way with me.”

His entire face goes red, and his hands still on the lock. He looks like he honestly hadn’t thought about the implications of his actions. It’s kinda cute.

“Can you even fly one of these?” she asks, deciding to throw him a bone.

“I’ll figure it out,” he replies, turning back to hacking the lock. His face is still red.

“No need,” Lindsay says. “I flew ships like this all the time when I was younger. This model is based on something the Union division on Mars uses.”

James look at her again, eyebrows raised, but she doesn’t comment further.

—

He doesn’t kill her once they’re in space, and she can’t help but be surprised. Maybe it’s just because he doesn’t know how to pilot this kind of ship. It doesn’t really matter why; she sleeps with a knife within reach anyway.

Once they’re out of orbit, she puts the ship on autopilot and heads into the back. It’s a tiny ship—really, it’s a glorified shuttle—and it’s not far into the cramped galley, where James is going through the food stores. It’s a ship built for short trips, not journeys across the void, but it’ll hold up well enough.

They had left the planet in a hurry so as to not be spotted by any of the Union (though they were rare on the part of the planet where Lindsay had been holed up), and they hadn’t checked beforehand.

“Whoever owned this ship had apparently just restocked,” James says when he hears her approach. “I picked a good ship.”

“It has full fuel reserves too,” she tells him. “Baby flies like a dream.”

She hesitates for a few seconds. “The name is Lindsay, by the way. Realized I never introduced myself.”

Their course is set for Sinope, one of Jupiter’s outermost moons. No one will question a stolen ship there. It’ll take a couple weeks to get through the asteroid belt.

It gives them a chance to get to know each other.

“I only go by James in the business,” he says in reply, turning to lean against the narrow counter, a can on food in his hands. “To everyone else, I’m Ryan.”

She smiles. “Nice to meet you, Ryan.”

“The same to you, Lindsay.”

—

More often than not, Lindsay sleeps in the cockpit. This is where she’s comfortable, with the stars spread out into infinity in front of her and the hum of the ship in her ears.

Ryan finds her here, and shakes her awake before he hands her a cup of coffee. “Where did you learn to fly this?” he asks, folding down to sit on the floor near the pilot’s seat.

She shrugs. “On Mars, everyone serves in the Union forces for four years.”

He makes a surprised noise. “Thought you were a drifter.”

Lindsay glances over at him. He’s busy staring at the ink on her shoulder. “I was, for a long time,” she says. “Parents settled eventually.”

Ryan hums and pulls up the sleeve of his t-shirt to show off the spiraling tattoo covering his upper arm. “Tethys,” he says, and nods at her noise of recognition. “Yeah, I like taking jobs there—I can visit old friends when I have some free time. My parents are Terran, though.”

Even without him saying it, Lindsay knows this, can read the meaning in the tattoos. It’s a system that most people have adopted these days, getting tattoos of their birth planets, of their homeworlds, of their parents’ lineage. It’s helpful in their line of business for posthumous identification, but it also gives a sense of community to a people spread out across the stars. You get to knowing what certain kinds of tattoos mean.

—

It takes a week in the void for Lindsay to realize that Ryan had absolutely no plan to kill her at any point, for any reason.

“It’s going to destroy your reputation, going off the radar,” Lindsay says, but Ryan only shrugs.

“I’ve gotten decent at reinventing myself,” he says. Lindsay can’t argue that; she has, too.

—

The night before they’re set to arrive at the outpost on Sinope, Lindsay stays up, making sure her calculations are perfect. Ryan stays nearby for a lot of it, but he dozes off where he’s sitting on the floor at one point and she prods him awake and makes him go to bed.

These outer moons, they don’t get regulated like the Amalthea group and Galilean moons do. Most of these outer moons were never even terraformed: too expensive, with all the tiny moons Jupiter has. It makes the outer moons good hideaways for smugglers and all kinds of people looking to escape the Union. And, well, Lindsay hadn’t been on the right side of the law for a very long time.

On Sinope, there will be other ships, people who will be willing to hire someone with a blacklist etched into their arm. She hasn’t asked Ryan about his plans after this, and he hasn’t asked about hers.

She finds herself thinking that she’s going to miss him. Over the last few weeks, they’ve become something like friends. They have exchanged stories around their times in the Union; they’ve talked about games and about mutual acquaintances in the business. Hell, Lindsay told Ryan about the ship’s cats she would befriend as a kid. It’s going to be strange, not being in close quarters with him anymore.

—

Lindsay thought Mars was bad, but being inside Sinope-1 is _hell_. It’s stifling and crowded and there are no windows to the outside. She can’t wait to get off this rock.

Sinope-1 is as lawless as she expected, and she and Ryan stick close for a while. They sell the stolen ship to a traveling scrapyard, which nets them enough cash to each buy a ride off this moon (or a ship together, Lindsay doesn’t let herself think). Lindsay is sad to see the ship go, but it’s wiser to get rid of it before it causes them problems with the Union.

Ryan is scrolling through a datapad as they push their way toward a quieter alcove so Lindsay can catch her breath. He huffs out a laugh at something he sees there, and she looks at him with raised eyebrows.

He shows her the screen for a moment. “Going through the classifieds,” he explains. “Looking for jobs I could pick up.”

“This is how you get your jobs?” Lindsay asks, leaning against the cool metal wall. “The _classifieds_?”

“Sometimes,” he admits sheepishly. “I was looking for board on a ship, too.”

“Yeah?” Lindsay says. “Find anything?”

“Not anything I would trust,” Ryan mutters. “But there is someone looking to sell a ship for cheap. If… If we pooled our money we would have more than enough for it.” He looks hopeful at the idea.

“And here I thought you wanted to get away from me,” Lindsay says, but she’s smiling. “Sure. Let’s take a look at this ship. We can fight for custody of it when we get sick of each other.”

—

It’s an older ship, not as nice as the one they hijacked, and even smaller. Means it’ll be harder for the Union to track, which is perfect. The ship is in pretty good condition, too, but there are a couple spots Lindsay can see that she’ll want looked at.

“Decent enough?” Ryan asks when she emerges from the engine room, wiping grease from her fingers onto a cloth she tucks into her pants.

“Hm? Yeah,” Lindsay says. “If she gives us any trouble I have a mechanic on Europa who’ll help us out.”

Money exchanges hands and they refuel and grab as many rations as they can, and then Lindsay is in the cockpit again. They break orbit and Lindsay can finally breathe again, surrounded by stars.

—

“Ryan,” Lindsay says. It’s been twelve hours since they left Sinope’s orbit, and both of them are half-asleep. “Why did you decide you wanted to stick together?”

Ryan looks up from his seat on the floor. He’s already made himself comfortable in a nook between equipment. He shrugs. “Dunno. It seemed like a better option than being by myself again.”

“Yeah,” Lindsay says softly. “Same here.”

—

When Lindsay had asked about the ship’s name, the man selling it had shrugged and said that it didn’t have one besides its model. Which meant that he wasn’t the original owner, or he would have known the ships name.

She had quickly dubbed her _Wayfarer_ in her mind. It fit her. The first time Lindsay calls the ship by name in conversation, Ryan only smiles.

—

“Where to now, Ryan?” Lindsay asks after they make a stop at Europa for a tune-up. Michael is good at what he does, and Wayfarer probably runs better now than she did when she was new.

Ryan grins, sharp and mean. “Well,” he says, “I do have the location of the people who put that hit out on you. I’m sure we could pay them a visit.”

“Yeah?” Lindsay says, matching his smile. “Yeah, I think I’m up for a little trip.”

—

It’s a strange noise that rouses Lindsay from sleep, and she frowns as she stretches the kinks out of her back. That thudding noise doesn’t sound good. It’s coming from the tiny, empty hold, and she makes her way down.

Ryan is there, going through what looks like an exercise routine. He is in nothing but shorts and a sleeveless shirt that clings to his torso. Lindsay leans against the doorway to admire the view.

It’s something that Lindsay noticed from the start, that Ryan is a good-looking guy. He’s also her friend, or something like it. But Lindsay can’t help but admit that Ryan is incredibly hot like this, when he’s in his element. His movements aren’t graceful, per se: they’re efficient, brutal even in practice like this, and Lindsay admires the sheen of sweat on his biceps, how his hair sticks to his scalp.

“How long have you been standing there?” Ryan asks when he stops to catch his breath and take a drink of water. He hasn’t looked at her once.

Lindsay shrugs as she watches him towel the sweat from his hair, making it fluff out in different directions. She holds in a laugh. “Long enough,” she finally says. “Trouble sleeping?”

“Something like that.” Ryan turns to smile at her. Now, she notices the slump of his shoulders, the hollows under his eyes.

She knows about that; knows about the nightmares that haunt her sleep some nights, that keep her up for days on end. She doesn’t need for him to clarify further.

“Come on then,” Lindsay says. “Let’s fight. I’m sure I can wear you out.” It comes out a little more flirty, a little more forward, than she usually is, but it’s late and there’s nothing but the stars and the hum of the engine around them.

Her words make Ryan’s cheeks go pink with more than exertion, but he’s smiling, a real smile nothing like the ones she saw when they were still strangers. “Sure,” he says.

He’s good, she realizes quickly. Really good. They’re both holding back a lot, unwilling to really hurt the other without any sort of medic on the ship, but even so she can see how good he is. His movements are clipped and sharp, no movement wasted, and she recognizes the style. She dodges a hit and takes a moment to wonder if he was ever in special operations. Lindsay herself hadn’t been, but she might as well have been for the way she was trained. That’s just how the Union is on Mars.

Ryan has height and weight on his side, but Lindsay isn’t totally without her own tricks—dirty shit she learned from growing up on ships—and she manages to knock him onto his back and pin him while he’s winded and gasping for breath.

“That was fun,” she comments, gripping his wrists tight and keeping them pinned near his shoulders. “Think you’ll be able to sleep now?”

Ryan’s gaze is distracted, and he pushes her away a moment later so he can stand. “Yeah, actually,” he says. “Thanks.” She watches him walk away, taking in the awkward way he’s moving and the haste with which he left and the way he wouldn’t face her when he stood.

Oh gods. She gave him a boner. Lindsay grins to herself and pumps her fist in the air. _Fuck_ yes.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ryanthepowerbottomguy](http://ryanthepowerbottomguy.tumblr.com) over on tumblr! come say hi! (there's also a lot of tumblr-exclusive writing over there)


End file.
